I am no Deming or Drucker.  I have no Phd, have conducted no scholary research or gathered statistics.  My opinions are drawn from over thirty years in middle management. I am neither executive, consultant, nor belong to any elite institutions.  I am, however, passionate about these views: Employees come to work with an implicit trust that their managers are always working for the best interest of the company and its employees. That trust should not and cannot ever be taken for granted. Look what is happening today. It is no longer "What's good for the company is good for the manager." It has become "What's good for the manager is good for the company." Top executives have totally lost sight of this phenomenon and are allowing managers to run amok for their own personal agendas.
Several years ago I wrote a book on the subject of bad bosses, workplace culture and employee morale.  It is as relevant today as it was then.  Employee morale is directly linked to the interaction of employees with line managers who are charged with executing the policies and strategies of companies.  Unfortunately, many of these managers subvert the good intentions of the organization to meet their own personal goals and agendas at the expense of their peers and subordinates.  This management subculture is the result of a corporate culture of ignorance, indifference and excuse.  Better corporate level leadership is the key.  Read more in "160 Degrees of Deviation:  The Case for the Corporate Cynic."
Many management consultants and the like seem to share a common disdain for these views as well as my retelling of personal experiences and observations in the book. You would not believe the negative reviews and comments.  It is as if I were the problem! Well so be it!  I will continue to be a voice in the wilderness.  Perhaps that voice is beginning to gain some strength.  

Jerome Alexander

I am no Deming or Drucker.  I have no Phd, have conducted no scholary research or gathered statistics.  My opinions are drawn from over thirty years in middle management. I am neither executive, consultant, nor belong to any elite institutions.  I am, however, passionate about these views: Employees come to work with an implicit trust that their managers are always working for the best interest of the company and its employees. That trust should not and cannot ever be taken for granted. Look what is happening today. It is no longer "What's good for the company is good for the manager." It has become "What's good for the manager is good for the company." Top executives have totally lost sight of this phenomenon and are allowing managers to run amok for their own personal agendas.
Several years ago I wrote a book on the subject of bad bosses, workplace culture and employee morale.  It is as relevant today as it was then.  Employee morale is directly linked to the interaction of employees with line managers who are charged with executing the policies and strategies of companies.  Unfortunately, many of these managers subvert the good intentions of the organization to meet their own personal goals and agendas at the expense of their peers and subordinates.  This management subculture is the result of a corporate culture of ignorance, indifference and excuse.  Better corporate level leadership is the key.  Read more in "160 Degrees of Deviation:  The Case for the Corporate Cynic."
Many management consultants and the like seem to share a common disdain for these views as well as my retelling of personal experiences and observations in the book. You would not believe the negative reviews and comments.  It is as if I were the problem! Well so be it!  I will continue to be a voice in the wilderness.  Perhaps that voice is beginning to gain some strength.  

Jerome Alexander

Yes, terence, inevitable indeed. Profits trump all, even the most basic of human rights. It's amusing that the people who are the most ready to jump in to denounce Marxist theory will, almost invariably, use arguments that only end with showing how little they know about the subject. Realpc, you may have been hitting the bookshelves, but pulling down the wrong books.

"The alienating and hiearchical capitalist social division of labor that Marx so eloquently criticized remained intact and class privileges were sustained." Yes of course. Because class hierarchies came along way before capitalism and will not disappear just because you abolish capitalism. So stop using capitalism as your all-purpose scapegoat. ".you really need to stop whining about that damn cigarette smoke and hit the bookshelves it seems to me." I have been hitting the bookshelves since before you were born. I search for truth and try to avoid indoctrination. I am not an anti-capitalist but that does not mean I am conservative. I am just an individual trying to understand for myself, not a follower. One thing that interests me is how strangely words can be used to defend an ideology. For example, now that socialism has obviously failed, leftists call the failed socialist states "capitalist." Any system that helps the poor will be referred to as "socialist," even if it is a capitalist system.

Yakov says: "Stop your whining man! If you don't like your work environment, you have the freedom to go find another job." This reminds me of an incident Paul witnessed in the Fall of 95. Picture this: 400 level History course offered at a satellite campus in ultra conservative Chicago suburbs. One day Paul was commenting about working conditions somewhere, and a middle aged gold-chain-dangling yuppie wannabe we nicknamed "Dupage Boy" says "THEY'RE FREE TO QUIT!" and I respond "THEY'RE FREE TO STARVE!".. and he asked "free to starve? wha?" I didn't feel like going into the "No work=no wage=no money=no fodd=starvation=death" chain, so I just gave him the finger. This demonstrates the absolute power our boss has over us. They literally hold our very lives in their hands. That is all they were trying to tell Paul. Have a nice day :-)

In the new world order workers will have to individually suppress tyrannical doctrines with logic and ultimately strive for better working conditions through whining and complaining because that's what lower class wageslaves do best. i factor my wage by the minute and ultimately i'm only currently worth 3 gummy bears a minute. The marketplace takes care of the worker by being able to wait and take advantage of managements highs and lows and be able to position him/herself into a respectable situation through threats of finding alternative work if conditions do not improve. logic dictates if the boss hired y ou so will another boss. The free market survives no matter what the working conditions. The worker has to accept what is acceptable or move on. Change only occurs through manipulative discourse and casual well placed comments. Bosses have ears but how much compassion they display is up to their belief in purgatory. Evil managers go to hell. It's written in my new bible: wageslaves unite because God's a socialist.

But I didn't personally label it "capitalist," you ignorant, reactionary uber-nag. Read what I said: that some respectable left minds have talked about the Soviet formation as a form of state capitalism. In one version of that perspective, the point was that the disappearance of the individual capitalist did not mean the end of the capitalist exploitation of labor. Class rule continued with the state replacing individual capitalists as monopolizers of means of production and exploiters of alienated producers. The alienating and hiearchical capitalist social division of labor that Marx so eloquently criticized remained intact and class privileges were sustained. But you can't bother to care and know about such subleties and nuances within left thought; that would mean actually getting off your lazy right wing rear end to read some left Marxists like Paul Mattick and/or Raya Dunayevskaya. It would mean acting like you really care about Marxist throught and writing. While you're not at it you can remain ignorant of (1) Marx's Civil War in France, about the Paris Commune (which shows him to be anything but an enthusiastic fan of Soviet-style state formation); (2) Marx's belief that socialism would emerge first and most survivably in the most advanced industrial-capitalist states and would have to be international in nature (there was no Marxist basis for Stalin's "socialism in one state" [and especially in a largely pre-industrial state] myth); and (3) how little time Marx spent (for better or worse) theorizing about what socialism would look like. I won't even get into the Soviet history texts you don't know. Why do you even bother, realpc? What do you hope to achieve with this crap you just robotically throw up again and again like some kind of hyper-reactive Energizer web-Bunny? Here's another licking but you'll just keep on ticking. Another thing, who told you (as you said in your earlier post) that radicals hate industry? Or was that "yakov bok" (a character in a Bernard Malamud novel by the way) who said that (I can't tell you two clowns apart anymore)? Well whichever one of you two said it, sorry pal but you don't know Marx's critique of the Luddites either, apparently. You do not impress me in the slightest. You don't have any business talking about Marxism. That comment is less ideological than you might think. I've met reactionaries who know quite a bit about left thought and have interesting things to say about radical theory and literature on occasion; you do not appear to be one of those people. How come we all have to go read Hayek and Ricardo and Rand and Friedman (Milty and also Thomas) and other unmitigated assholes like that but you don't have to actually know what Marx or Luxembourg or Gramsci or Trotsky or Mattick or Sweezy or Dobb or Mandel or Hobsbawm or Thompson or Rocker or Chomsky actually said and wrote? It's not fair, realpc...you really need to stop whining about that damn cigarette smoke and hit the bookshelves it seems to me.

"the USSR is considered by many respectable left minds to have been a form of state capitalism." Oh come on. The USSR was an all-out effort to implement Marxist theories in order to create peace, justice and prosperity. Instead of admitting that there is nothing practical about Marxism, you label the failed experiment "capitalist."

Managers seem worse than the owners in my experience. Old Marxism said everything would be aok once private ownership of key economic sectors was transcended. But the old Soviet bloc (and I suppose Cuba today) showed how alienating, hierarchical labor processes and power structures have their own life and generate arrogant ruling classes even without private ownership of means of production. I suppose non-profits can show some of the same thing. "Left" institutions can't wage a consistent fight for democracy and justice when based on internal hierarchy. Yes it seems like the turf battles and power games are often worse in non-profits, partly because there's less to go around. People in many US workplaces are often justly terrified. Without union protection (and I think private sector US union density is down to well les than 1/10 of the workforce), they are much at the mercy of their overlords.In US you generally lose your health insurance when you lose your job; I know plenty of people who are locked into jobs they loathe by fear of losing health insurance for themselves and their loved ones. I wonder how much America's odd (unique in the industrialized world) system of employment-based health insurance is a result of the control it confers on the creepy managerial class. Speaking of which, realpc was the other one I was expecting to hear abusive things (like calling workers' complaints over heat exhaustion in a 90 degree office "pathetic" whining over "a temperature range of more than one degree") from. And there he goes again with the Soviet Union, as if that's a relevant comparison. For what it's worth, the USSR is considered by many respectable left minds to have been a form of state capitalism. These guys are so incredibly predictable and knee-jerk. It's just laughable.

realpc, this blog is not really about the freaking climate control capabilities of buildings in capitalist countries. It's about the authoritarian corporate culture that is used to thwart collective worker action and how our country is rigged to facilitate that authoritarian culture.

I know this may sound off-topic, but consider that most builders/owners erect buildings on the cheap knowing that they aren't designed to keep you cool. They would rather earn short term profit and waste valuable resources (a topic we could spend days discussing)rather than save energy (and long term money) while making workers comfortable. This is more like a double slap in the face to the Average Joe that lives or works in the building. "We're going to put you in a space that we had designed, we know you'll hate it, and if you talk to others about it, well, not only will you be fired, we'll label you a pro-worker pinko" "And when we have to start a war to protect all the energy resources we're wasting, your tax dollars will pay for it!, and don't discuss that either, or we'll label you anti-American!" ... And this is the "FREE" society we live in.

Americans are so unhealthy and pathetic they can't tolerate a temperature range of more than one degree. They think perfect climate control is a natural right. What do you think office temperature was like before the industrial age you despise so much? I have found from working in various offices that no one believes you if you are the only complainer (my complaint was cigarette smoke). If the problem is affecting others you can complain as a group and mgment might listen. If all your complaints are ignored it's possible the manager does not like you and is hoping you will quit anyway. To summarize: Do not expect perfect comfort anyway except possibly in your own home; do not expect anyone to care how you feel unless they could not replace you in less than 5 minutes; do not assume every annoyance is the result of capitalism. Workers in the Soviet Union had it much worse.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people in this country have bought into the propaganda of the wonders of free-trade and global-corporatism, the economic "shining example to the world". From free-market to free-trade, nothing more than a plan to keep the workforce yoked and gagged. When everyone is afraid that their job will be the next to go, they hold no leverage,no power. It doesn't help them to know that things may be worse somewhere else in the world. The only thing we have to compare the present to is our own past.

Right from the beginning, the colonial slavemasters used the whip to keep the white slaves/indentured servants in line. And then the same thing with the black chattel slaves. Now we wear "chains of silver," instead of "chains of iron." Meaning that we are kept in line with propaganda, indoctrination, racial conflict, religion, fear of poverty, and social pressures. The elite first split us up over race. They set us against each other 300 years ago using miscegnation laws. THen immigration was used to balkanize the population with competing racial/cultural factions. Also, there were massive amounts of anti-collectivist propaganda fed into the American consciousness. I have downloaded some public domain examples of it from the prelinger archives at http://www.archive.org Read comparisons of the USA and west Europe, like this one: http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/us-d.html They have a different culture over there, collectivist, not anti-collectivist. But then west Europe is not just a few generations away from slavery. Also, their welfare state eliminates some of the leverage employers have. That is one reason why the elite will not OK universal healthcare.

Paul, really good post. Its remarkable how the workplace culture instills fear in workers so that they're scared to challenge anything. Like you said, atomization is a big part of that, and keeping people competitive with each other. The actual control managers/bosses have over employees is frankly scary -- going to a very deep level where the employee actually loses their sense of self and becomes an automaton actuated by the only living entity that matters, the boss. The problem with unionizing is most workplace environments are broken up in small groups, no one talks to each other, and there's competition instead of comradery. There's probably a semi-science to keeping employees from organizing or believing themselves to be deserving of anything more than what the Messiah-in-a-tie explicitly tells them.

In response to YB,...wow, what an abusive, personally insulting, and mean-spirited comment. At the same time, yakov you have quite a way of making me seem clairvoyant. Did you bother, dear YB, to read down to the last paragraphs, where I say that this is only peripherally about me and where I predict a comment pretty much along your lines? I just didn't know it would come so fast. Does it bother you to be so remarkably predictable? You just can't believe that someone might care about more than their own conditions and so you do your best to make readers think I was only writing about self; you project bourgeois narcissism into everyone else. How repulsive. The 6-year old comment is especially over-insulting and otherwise over the top... The "you can't organize anythng because that requires leadership which goes against the principles of the collective" comment is sort of funny in light of leftists' rich and admirable record serving as sparkplug militants behind working-class movements and actions within and beyond the West. Not good, yakov. In the meantime, you fulfill standard ideological expectations by trying to infantlize a left writer ("you're a crybaby Street") and telling a person in the richest and most powerful nation on earth to drop his workplace issues because they compare favorably with those of people in desperately poor nations on the imperial periphery. The comparison matters of course but you put it to shamelessly reactionary use in a marvelous example of the capitalist/corporate-globalizationist "race to the bottom" mentality. Please re-read (or more likely read for the first time) my comments on the problems (from a left perspective, which you axiomatically reject) with the purely individual solution of leaving. That's what I've always done in fact but there's nothing to be so damn proud about in that. Maybe malcontents' mobility out is part of what keeps workplaces bad. The walkout idea is a good one...but you don't mean it....you included it just as a way to bait me. This is your M.O..

Stop your whining man! If you don't like your work environment, you have the freedom to go find another job. Do you think Kenyan office workers, or Brazilian office workers, or better yet, people working for actual government agencies instead of public interest organizations like you blame the lack of funds for improved air conditioning or shades, on the U.S. imperialist master/servant relationship? You sound like a 6 year old that is upset that he isn't getting his way. Then again, that's what most socialists/anarchists/or whatever you're calling yourselves this week sound like. You're not being "oppressed by the man" because your office is hot. Why don't you show "the man" the power of the people by organizing a collective walk out? Maybe then he'll realize how wide spread the heat stroke problem in your office is. Of course, you can't organize anything because that requires leadership which goes against the principles of the collective. In that case, either go on suffering, or go get another job.